The Midterm Election Lie That Could Change Everything

Republicans are in a much stronger position now than they have been, not just compared to eight years ago, but over the long term. The relative health of the Republican Party, at least in terms of party registration, is pretty darn good.

You’re not hearing that because we’re in the middle of a big demoralization operation. This is designed to get Republicans to give up and not vote. 

We keep hearing Republicans are about to be crushed. Is that true? Or is that wishcasting? And if it gets repeated enough, does it become reality?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. We keep hearing over and over again that it’s the end of the world, that Republicans are going to lose all the Senate seats, and the Democrats are going to end up winning the day.

The House was pretty much a foregone conclusion, because Republicans have to lose only two seats to lose the House. So get ready for Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), God love us. 

But the Senate tells a different story. Every single major Senate race is within the margin of error. Poll numbers in Michigan, where Abdul Rahman El-Sayed is running against Mike Rogers, show El-Sayed about 3.2 points ahead. But the latest polls show the race is within the margin of error. 

When El-Sayed ran against Rep. Haley Stevens, he was a 99% shot to win. That turned out to be a demoralization operation on behalf of Abdul Rahman El-Sayed, because when you told everybody Stevens had no shot, a small number of people didn’t show up to vote for her. That small number of people stood between her and becoming the Democratic nominee in that state.

That is why the Democrats are bringing Barack Obama to Michigan. If El-Sayed were well ahead, as Roy Cooper is in North Carolina, then Barack Obama wouldn’t be descending on Michigan to campaign with El-Sayed. Also, Michigan shows a pattern of Republicans outperforming final polling averages in recent presidential and senatorial elections. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton led by 3.4%, and Trump won the state by 0.3 percentage points in 2024.

That Michigan seat will make a world of difference. With Republicans right now at 53 senators, that would take them to 54. 

In Maine, incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins is running against Troy Jackson, who looks like he has bodies hidden in his basement. Somehow the Democrats in Maine came up with a candidate even less attractive than Graham Platner, who probably did have bodies in his basement.

Troy Jackson is a gigantic weirdo, and Susan Collins is perhaps the most professional campaigner in modern American history. She’s been set to lose her seat over and over, and she wins every single time. The last time she ran, in 2020, she won 51% of the vote. Jackson is up 0.7%. That’s a dead tie. 

Move on to Texas. Texas is the big Democratic hope for picking up a seat. The RealClearPolitics polling average has James Talarico — the weird Howdy Doody Texas candidate who somehow has a favorite drag queen — up 2.8 percentage points over state Attorney General Ken Paxton. It’s a dead heat. In the recent past, Democrats have often seemed to be polling pretty well in Texas. And then it turns out that Texas is still full of Texans. 

Talarico has disappeared lately. He hasn’t been seen at a campaign event for the past 12 days or so. Perhaps he’s at a drag queen clown convention, or a Bible seminar where the Bible was forbidden. 

He says he got the flu. But maybe he simply doesn’t want to make any big mistakes. 

Election forecaster Nate Silver has made the following point: If you tell somebody that they have a 60% shot of something happening, their brain immediately goes to, “It’s going to happen, right? 100% shot. 60 equals 100.”

Nope. 60 equals 60. It means that six in 10 times a thing will happen and four times it will not happen.

Move on over to Iowa, where Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) faces Josh Turek. Turek is about as good a candidate as Democrats have put up this election cycle, a sort of Blue Dog Democrat who pretends to be moderate on issues including trans ideology and immigration. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, the race is essentially a dead heat. 

In Alaska, the RealClearPolitics polling average has Mary Peltola up 1.2 percentage points against the GOP incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. Another dead heat.

There’s a narrative that’s being built. Silver said that at the end of every election cycle, a bunch of pollsters start following each other around. None of them wants to publish the outlier poll. He is saying that what you’re seeing is late-breaking narrative building by all of these pollsters.

 We’ve seen that before in 2016, when the polls were actually somewhat close between President Trump and Hillary Clinton. But then they started building up the idea that there was no way she could possibly lose. And that’s how we ended up with everyone in America believing that Hillary Clinton was going to win. That perception may have lost her the election, because Democrats, feeling the election was in the bag, stayed home.

It’s not all good news for Republicans. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty noted, Republicans are spending gobs of money in states that normally they wouldn’t spend in at all. According to CNN, early-voting data show advantages for Democrats. CNN said that in Iowa, Democrats have made 67% of ballot requests, up from 54% at this point in 2024. In Pennsylvania, they are at 66%, up from 62%. In Maine, it’s 57%, up from 53%.

But those early-balloting numbers aren’t fully indicative of anything, given that Republicans show up on Election Day.

If it were going the other way — if Republicans showed up very early to vote — you would imagine a wipeout in favor of the GOP, because Republicans tend to show up more at the polls than Democrats, and Democrats tend to vote early.

The demoralization operation is designed to help Democrats in close races get across the finish line first.

There is only one way to defeat them: vote, and get all your like-minded friends and family to vote.

If we don’t, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.